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In August 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden. In retaliation, President Clinton ordered a missile strike on the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, arguing that it was a base for terrorism. Later, it was proven that the plant had no ties to terrorists. Therefore, El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries brought complaints against the United States in the US Court of Federal Claims.

In November 2005, the District Court found that El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries failed to show that the US waived its sovereign immunity regarding the asserted claims. This meant that the District Court did not have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiff’s claims. Accordingly, the District Court dismissed the complaint.

In March 2007, the District Court denied the plaintiff’s motion to alter judgment, in which it sought to the reinstate their defamation and law of nations claims. The District Court based its decision on the fact that the plaintiffs did not adduce any new evidence or arguments to support that an error of law was made during the earlier decision of November 2005.

The applicants were relatives of six Iraqi nationals who were killed by the British forces in Iraq in 2003. The applicants brought a claim against the Secretary of State because he refused to investigate the deaths and to provide redress to them as relatives of the deceased Iraqi’s. Their claim was dismissed on 13 June 2007 by the House of Lords. In dismissing the case, the House of Lords held that the crimes were committed outside the UK’s territory, and therefore, the Court did not have power to adjudicate (jurisdiction).

In 1988, the Iraqi government under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, launched a military campaign against the Kurdish population residing in northern Iraq. In eight operations from February until September of that year, both conventional and chemical weapons were deployed against the citizens of Kurdish villages resulting in the deaths and injury of hundreds of thousands. Others were executed in the following raids, their homes were looted and entire villages were burned to the ground. Others still were transported to prison camps where they were starved and detained in inhumane conditions. This campaign became known as the Al Anfal campaign and was the subject of the Iraqi High Tribunal’s second case  (the first one being the Al Dujail-trial). 

Seven defendants, including Saddam Hussein and his cousin, nicknamed Chemical Ali, were brought before the Court. Charges against Hussein were dropped when he was executed in the course of the trial as a result of his conviction in another proceeding. By a verdict of 24 June 2007, the Tribunal convicted five of the remaining six defendants, one of whom was acquitted for lack of evidence. Three, including Chemical Ali and two military commanders, received death sentences; the others received cumulative sentences that essentially amounted to life imprisonment. The present decision by the Appellate Chamber of the Tribunal confirmed the trial verdict and dismissed all appeals.

Several villagers from Aceh, Indonesia, filed a civil suit against oil and gas company Exxon Mobil. They argued that the company carried responsibility for human rights violations committed by Indonesian security forces by hiring these forces and because Exxon Mobil knew or should have known that human rights violations were being committed.

In this phase of the proceedings, the defendants requested the Court to grant a summary judgment and thereby to dismiss the claims before a trial would be held. The Court denied this request, stating that in this phase of the proceedings, the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to support their allegations and for the proceedings to continue. The Court considered that the plaintiffs had made it likely that the Indonesian security forces had maltreated them and that Exxon Mobil was responsible for this. One of Exxon’s companies, EMOI, had controlled and paid the forces and according to the Court, EMOI should have foreseen that violence would take place. 

Who can be held responsible in a Court of law for human rights violations? In this case, victims and relatives of victims of the South African apartheid regime sued several corporations for their involvement in South Africa in the period between 1948 and 1994. They were liable, the plaintiffs reasoned, because the police shot demonstrators “from cars driven by Daimler-Benz engines”, “the regime tracked the whereabouts of African individuals on IBM computers”, “the military kept its machines in working order with oil supplied by Shell”, and so forth. After the Supreme Court remitted the case, the District Court established a framework to determine when corporations can be held liable for human rights violations. Simply doing business with a state which violates the law of nations is not sufficient to establish liability, but if a corporation provides means by which human rights violations can be carried out and if the corporation knows that its action will substantially contribute the perpetrator in committing human rights violations, liability can be established. After applying this framework to several allegations made against several corporations, the Court establishes that part of these claims are plausible, thus allowing these claims to proceed.